MarkMonitor will be biggest office tenant at The Village at Meridian

International online brand protection firm MarkMonitor will become the largest office tenant at The Village at Meridian on May 23 after operating for 10 years two miles to the east in an industrial area near Emerald and Five Mile Road.

MarkMonitor has a five- to seven-year lease on 41,000 of The Village’s 137,561 square feet of office space above the retail space in three buildings. It was the fifth-largest office deal in the Treasure Valley in 2015, said Angie Emmons, market research analyst at Thornton Oliver Keller Commercial Real Estate.

MarkMonitor is leaving a 25,000-square-foot structure where the company has grown to more than 200 employees with two building expansions. Serlin expects MarkMonitor’s Boise presence to grow to more than 300 at The Village in the next five years.

“It could not be more different than where we have been,” said Matt Serlin, vice president of global client services for MarkMonitor. “This is the ability for people to work in an environment where they can go to the gym, meet with family, go to the park and have all of the lunch options.”

MarkMonitor was founded in 1999 in Boise, near Hewlett-Packard, and Boise remains its largest operation with the company headquarters now in San Francisco and other offices in London, Lithuania, Japan, China, Denmark, Burbank, Calif., and Maryland. MarkMonitor has more than 500 employees around the world, Serlin said.

The Boise office does client services for U.S. customers, which include more than 50 of the Fortune 100 companies that enlist MarkMonitor to provide online brand protection, domain name management, anti-counterfeiting for electronic, pharmaceutical and clothing companies, anti-piracy and anti-fraud services, Serlin said.

MarkMonitor in 2003 acquired Alldomains.com, located near San Francisco. Along with its headquarters, sales, marketing and engineering are in San Francisco.

Landing MarkMonitor takes the Village at Meridian to 84 percent office occupancy on the second and third floors of three buildings with 74,468 square feet, 10,793 square feet and 52,300 square feet. MarkMonitor will be located on the third floor above the Anthropologie and Sur La Table stores.

The offices on the second and third floors above the retail stores did not fill at the same rate as the shops, which first opened in October 2013.

“The momentum kicked in after one and a half years,” said Hugh Crawford, general manager at The Village. ”We understood that the office component would follow the retail. Office deals take a long time. We’re pretty pleased to be at 84 percent (occupancy) with office.”

Idaho Timber, First American Title, and MassMutual are among the dozen office tenants at The Village.

Crawford has a two-story retail space that could become a second story office. The Village has no two-story retail stores.